


show me what i'm looking for (translation)

by queenofspades (enlightenight)



Series: Community After The Episodes Series [9]
Category: Community (TV)
Genre: 5.11 G.I. Jeff, F/M, Jeff is kinda suicidal (no shit), friendship/relationship because that's how we take our Jeff/Britta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 00:41:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10231673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enlightenight/pseuds/queenofspades
Summary: Post 5.11 G.I. Jeff: Jeff in his hospital bed, thinking about the past; and he tells his story to Britta. Originally for Keyword Challenge, written in Turkish. Translated fromShow Me What I'm Looking For





	

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: Episode 4.05, 5.04 & 5.11
> 
> There are some callbacks to my older fic [Advanced Survival Techniques](http://archiveofourown.org/works/712922)

Getting bent, most of the time, was better than being broken.

If something was bent, it meant there was still some hope. You could lift the pressure, apply it from the opposite direction, and turn the bent thing into _almost_ what it was used to be. Even though it would still carry the marks of that strain, it could be counted as healthy. 

If getting bent was a _comma,_ being broken was the full stop. Full stops usually ended bad sentences, even exclamation points were more objective than them. Bad news would be given with a full stop, or even worse, with multiple full stops — which was what made them so unbearable.  The sentence “Your license is temporarily suspended” ended with a full stop, for example. Or, the fact that his parents were getting a divorce was told him with fullstops. 

All these fullstops gave him unfixable strains of being bent — he would be surprised if he didn’t get those hits in a world where good things happened to good people.

But the thing that pushed him to being broken was an email that was sent by some stupid card he only got to gain more points while shopping. This mail with its flashing letters and exclamation points, this mail that had no intention of breaking him, was celebrating the reason Jeff Winger avoided looking at any calendars.

His birthday.

*

And now, he was thinking about all the things he would never tell to the blonde woman who was sleeping on a chair right next to him, his wrist watch, standing on the small table on his left, announced to the room that it was the next day with a tiny beep.

It was weird, it was only mere twenty-four hours that rendered his life so unbearable. He was happy forty-eight hours ago, at least compared to now. But last night, when the same watch beeped at twelve AM, and Jeff saw that shiny email, somethings had changed. 

There was one thing about today that he would never tell Britta — or the psychiatrists and psychologists he was gonna pay a fortune in the future: He _really_ wanted to die. 

He couldn’t have told them, he always wanted to give up on life. In seventh grade, as he opened that cut — even thinking about it still embarrassed him — the thing he thought before losing his consciousness over the blood loss was if the _death_ was something like this. It was cold, it made him feel exhausted, but if there was something twelve-year-old-Jeff and thirty-seven-year-old-Jeff agreed was that whatever they lived up to that day felt the same.

Birthdays were never enjoyable things for him, probably because he got into a stupid fight because of a stupid reason and had to have his eyebrow stitched. He would _never_ forget the disturbed and disgusted looks people threw his way in the couple days after the fight — probably because he had been giving himself the same look in the mirror since he lost his license.

“Are you awake?”

Britta’s voice, heavy with sleep, dragged Jeff out of his thoughts and pulled him to the real world. 

“Stupid question,” he said, with the hint of that classic sarcastic tone. “But yes.”

The blonde woman silently nodded and stretched, when she stood up saying she was going to get some coffee, Jeff was silent. His head feeling heavy with the drugs they gave him, and the thoughts, he watched the light coming in from the door’s small window dance in the room; as Britta — trying to be silent — went out of the room.

*

Jeff had never celebrated a birthday. That was, of course, if you didn’t count those phoney HR _surprises_ with an awful cake-personal development books-phoney congratulation certificates. He never told the Study Group that it was his birthday that day. Birthdays, according to him, were the days that the unnecessary expectations turned into almost always disappointments.

At least, it was always like this _for him._

His birthday, for a very long time, was a day nobody except him — or more like, nobody except HR department — remembered; and it was such a mundane day, passing by with mundane problems in the life, he was physically incapable of caring about it even if he wanted to. 

As he took that youth pills, he had no intention of dying, no. But as he lost his consciousness, he _definitely_ thought it was death, and that thought made him happy. 

_(Oh, god… He was a gold mine for therapists.)_

Britta came back, bringing the energising smell of coffee with her. “I would bring some to you,” she muttered, half apologising. “But the doctor said you should stay away from these kinda stuff for a while.” 

Jeff didn’t answer, which didn’t surprise Britta. She sat on the chair again, putting the earpods of her iPod as her hand, that wasn’t holding the coffee cup, touched Jeff’s left for a few seconds.

“You acted differently,” he said suddenly, his voice cracked from not speaking for a long while. He knew Britta was listening her music rather silent, like he knew she wouldn’t react. He cleared his throat, and continued, eyes closed as if he was trying to remember a dream he had. “Not exactly, but you liked it better _there,_ in my two-dimensional hallucination universe… Probably because you had this big-ass saw on your arm, but everyone else was happy that I remembered them… You acted differently.”

Britta took one of the earpods off, and stared at Jeff. It pulled some heartstrings to see the painful expression on the face of the man whom she shared so many good and bad moments with, or her something-like-boyfriend. 

“I would care about these when I was a kid,” Jeff continued. “Cartoons and toys, I mean. I would always say myself that _one day,_ I’d be _that_ strong. One day, I’d be strong, and these would all be over, that constant feeling of being humiliated and everything it brought.” He paused, as he took a deep breath, Britta pulled her chair right next to him, and this time, held his hand. 

He neither pulled his hand away like he normally would, nor acknowledged its existence visibly. Eyes closed, he continued telling it, as if nothing could stop him anymore.

“I didn’t cry as they stitched it up, have I told you that? I was twelve, it hurt so bad, my mom was too busy with telling the cops how it wasn’t her fault… I closed my eyes shut, and told myself it was going to be over, _it was going to be worth it._ It actually was worth it, you don’t know, I never told anyone… I never told anyone how happy you can be when someone acts like they care about you, and how you wonder how many times your heart can break when you realise it is just an act to use you…”

Britta looked at him, solemn, thoughtful. He continued again, his voice barely a whisper.

“I tried before,” he said, shy and hesitant. He didn’t sound like himself, at all. “To end. I was saved by someone in each time, as if I wanted it. On the other hand, nobody would’ve wanted to deal with the investigations after…” His chuckle was bitter, and he opened his eyes; looking at Britta’s. They gave each other glances, only two people who had nobody to understand them except each other, could give. 

“How many times?”

“Sorry?”

“How many times did you try?”

She sounded like she was about to cry.

Jeff paused, waiting as if he was _really_ trying to remember, as if he didn’t. “Two,” he said. “Three if you count this.”

“Should we count this?”

“I don’t know.”

Britta nodded.

“It was weird,” Jeff sighed. “I mean… I thought my life there, or my hallucination, was better than this — and I was right, look at us, Britta. We’ve been stuck in the same place for five years.” 

“You might be right,” the blonde replied. “Yeah, it’s not a problem for the rest, but us?” She stopped, as if there were too many words coming to her mouth, and she was putting them into an order. “I think we’ll eventually get away, but that doesn’t mean we should die… What you _still_ don’t want to realise is this, Jeff: You don’t need to push us out of your life _this much._ We all know you’re thirty-seven and not forty, even though both of them are equally bad to you. But the numbers don’t mean anything.” She chuckled. “What’s important is that you need to improve in the direction you pass those numbers.”

“Thanks, Britta.” 

He meant it. Everything looked less grim from this perspective.

“You’re welcome… But still, I hope your insurance covers a good psychologist — or better yet, a psychiatrist. For your own sake.”

“I have a good candidate in my mind,” Jeff muttered. “I’ll think about it when I get out.” 

Britta stood up again, muttering a barely audible _‘good’._ “I think I’ll talk to your doctor and say we should give you some chocolate,” she wiped away the tears fast. “He should take it seriously, given I’m a psych major.” Jeff smiled, and she waved her hand. “Don’t say it, I know, I suck at psychology.” 

As she left before he could say a word, he made a mental note to tell her that she was as helpful as Abed in his dream; and reached to her golden iPod.


End file.
